This is just another update about me using milk kefir in pizza dough or selling milk kefir smoothies, ready to eat yogurt with fresh fruit, or milk kefir smoothies. I was told the last time I posted that I would know in a week if I would be approved to have milk kefir in any of these products. This past Tuesday when I went to market, somehow my electric to my pizza stand was off. I really got upset and went though the whole process of finding out what happened to my electric. My deli case was reading on the thermometer that it was 50 degrees F. Since I have cheese, dough balls, sauce and other perishable items in the deli case and in my pizza prep refrigerator, I was worried if I would be able to open on Tuesday. I could have sustained a loss in money, if this would have happened over a period of a few days. My dough balls were fermenting faster than I wanted. I had been at market on Monday and knew the electric was on. There are always problems if you own your own business, even if a business is small. Finally after checking everything, I got in contact with the maintenance men. They located that someone had turned my main breaker off at one of the main panel boxes in the market. That took an hour to locate. Then I was late opening my pizza stand. I knew that sometime soon the food inspector would come to my stand for my annual inspection and knew if my fridge temperatures werenít right, I would get violations. Well, luckily the problem of my electric got straightened out. The food inspector came in the afternoon and I didnít get any violations. Now the new food inspector doesnít know if I am approved to sell milk kefir products. I need to contact the milk specialist again. I have done this many times.

If I am allowed to sell milk kefir products, I might experiment again by using milk kefir in pizza dough. I am now leaning towards experimenting using milk kefir in a Reinhart dough. If I ever get approved, I will start another thread if I used another dough formula for a Reinhart dough.

This is just an update about the food inspectors and them approving me to sell smoothies, yogurt, or pizza dough made with the milk kefir culture product. The food inspectors were at market yesterday and after asking me more questions about how I would prepare the milk keifr and let it ferment at ambient room temperatures and then either make smoothies, yogurt with fresh fruit, or pizza dough, they have finally approved me to sell any of these products. This was a long process. They said I was the first person in Pa. to want to use the milk kefir in any of these products to sell the public. Now I will have to work on a workable pizza dough that will include some milk kefir and also work on learning to make yogurt. Hopefully I will be able to make a good pizza dough with this milk kefir product. I also have to find some commercial products to make the fruit smoothies. I already can find many kinds of fresh fruit at market for the yogurt and fruit cups. I do have a NSF food blender for the smoothies. I think, but donít know, about I might try using raw unprocessed honey in the smoothies, because there is a honey standholder at market. I am also going to try and sell the boxes of milk kefir cultures to customers if they want to try to make milk kefir. The food inspectors told me I never would have been approved to use the real milk kefir in any of these products, even though I think the milk kefir from the real milk kefir grains is safe. I did let real milk kefir grains ferment in milk for a month, (at ambient room temperatures) and the milk kefir made from those real milk grains was still good and didnít make me sick.

After the first few tests using this milk kefir cultures in pizza dough, I know it can work with added yeast, but I want to be able to come up with a better formula. I am not sure if I want to try out this milk kefir (Yogourmet) in a Lehmann or Reinhart dough.